The article below originally appeared in the San Mateo Daily Journal and is being reprinted with permission.
The College of San Mateo Hall of Fame selection committee apparently knows a thing or two about encores.
A year after inducting 15 members into its inaugural Hall of Fame Class, CSM announced 16 new faces whose names will be added onto the HOF monument come Sept. 14.
“We wanted to do what was right,” said Gary Dilley, a member of the CSM Hall of Fame selection committee. “Most of the people being inducted really have a major historic contribution to athletics.”
The list of inductees covers a wide range of success and time at the institution celebrating 90 years of athletic history.
The 2012 class is highlighted by the induction of former track and field coach Oliver “Tex” Byrd, who founded the National Junior College Athletic Association 75 years ago while at CSM. One of his former pupils, Archie Williams, was part of the original induction class.
Joining Byrd is his successor Berny Wegner. According to Dilley, Byrd influenced Wegner into coaching when they met at Stanford.
Speaking of coaching legends, a living one, Mike Lewis is heading to the CSM Hall of Fame. Lewis is the current throws coach at the College of San Mateo.
“We’re trying to pick up all the great athletes who were early and then we will get to the more modern ones as we go along — both coaches and athletes,” Dilley said.
On the gridiron, former coaches Steve Shafer and Jack Thur will be enshrined in September. Shafer has a Super Bowl ring from his time with the defensively-dominant Baltimore Ravens team of the early 2000s. Thur was a high school teammate of 2011 inductee John Madden and has been coaching at CSM for three decades.
Rich Donner, the former CSM swimming and water polo coach, is also part of the 2012 class.
Speaking of the pool, swimmer Greg Buckingham got the nod from the selection committee. Dilley said Buckingham was the premiere swimmer of a CSM program that shined in the 1960s. He left for Stanford where he was one of the major contributions to that program’s rise to national prominence. He was an Olympic medalist in 1968.
“Men’s water polo used to be one of CSM’s top sports before it got dropped,” Dilley said, “and Steve Hamann was the premiere water polo player.” Hamann is also a part of the 2012 class.
Chris Diehl made the list as a two-time state champion in the heptathlon. Tom Scott, a wide receiver, rose to prominence as a former Most Valuable Player of the Canadian Football League where he won five CFL titles catching footballs from Warren Moon.
Ed Kertel (football), Cindy Galarza (basketball), Stacy Bergstedt (softball), Norm Angelini (baseball), Frank Pignataro (baseball) and Jeff Fishback (track) round off the 2012 list.
“No, there was no pressure at all,” Dilley said when asked if the committee felt a need to follow up the dynamic 2011 class with an even better list of CSM stars in 2012. “There’s no pressure to get one particular person. What we’re trying to do is just get the obvious ones first. The thing that’s hard to do is we can only get 12 to 15 people at a time or else the program takes forever and losses its glamour. We have enough Hall of Fame guys we can put in 70 or 80 people right away. We have a giant list of people and they can almost be interchangeable the first five years.”
CSM’s second Hall of Fame weekend will feature a Friday afternoon Hall of Fame Plaza ceremony followed by a cocktail reception and dinner at the College Center.
The celebration will continue with the Hall of Fame football game 1 p.m. Sept. 15 against Diablo Valley at College Heights Stadium and will include special halftime ceremonies.
